'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
This blog is a source for intellectual exploration. It includes a list of alternative resources and a source of free books. The placement of an article does not imply that I agree with it, merely that I found it thought-provoking. There are also poems and book reviews. Texts written by me are labelled. Readers are free to re-post anything they like.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

When Stefano Boeri
imagines the future of urban China he sees green, and lots of it. Office
blocks, homes and hotels decked from top to toe in a verdant blaze of shrubbery
and plant life; a breath of fresh air for metropolises that are choking
on a toxic diet of fumes and dust.

Last week, the Italian
architect, famed for his tree-clad Bosco
Verticale (Vertical Forest) skyscraper complex in Milan, unveiled
plans for a similar project in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing.

The Chinese equivalent
– Boeri’s first in Asia – will be composed of two neighbouring towers coated
with 23 species of tree and more than 2,500 cascading shrubs. The structures
will reportedly house
offices, a 247-room luxury hotel, a museum and even a green architecture
school, and are currently under construction, set for completion next year.

But Boeri now has even
bolder plans for China: to create entire “forest
cities” in a country that has become synonymous with environmental
degradation and smog. “We have been asked to design an entire city
where you don’t only have one tall building but you have 100 or 200 buildings
of different sizes, all with trees and plants on the facades,” Boeri told the
Guardian. “We are working very seriously on designing all the different
buildings. I think they will start to build at the end of this year. By 2020 we
could imagine having the first forest city in China.”

Boeri described his
“vertical forest” concept as the architectural equivalent of a skin graft, a
targeted intervention designed to bring new life to a small corner of China’s polluted
urban sprawl. His Milan-based practice claimed the buildings would suck25
tons of carbon dioxide from Nanjing’s air each year and produce about 60 kg of
oxygen every day.

“It is positive
because the presence of such a large number of plants, trees and shrubs is
contributing to the cleaning of the air, contributing to absorbing CO2 and
producing oxygen,’ the architect said. “And what is so important is that this
large presence of plants is an amazing contribution in terms of absorbing the
dust produced by urban traffic.” Boeri said, though,
that it would take more than a pair of tree-covered skyscrapers to solve China’s
notorious pollution crisis. ..Read more: